


out of the dead land

by TolkienGirl



Category: My Country: The New Age | 나의 나라
Genre: Angst, Bad parenting from the worst dad in the world, Friendship, Gen, Memory Loss, Spoilers for all aired episodes (to be safe), this show is flawless, title from T.S. Eliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 04:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: He is unfailingly kind.





	out of the dead land

He is unfailingly kind. Quick to smile, with sadness in his eyes; she sees all this and still greets him cheerfully, still feels a rush of comfort at the sound of his voice.

He is not really her brother. Yeon knows him as the master’s son, and she cannot look at _him_—the master—and think, _father_. It is as though her poor head is full of walls, or windows barred shut, for protection or secrecy.

_Orabeoni_, she tests, with voice and searching gaze (with a hand to the wall).

Her friend does not flinch.

(What fills his head? He is skilled as a warrior—Yeon has seen his armor—and yet he has the delicate ink-sketched features of one of the figures in the master’s precious books. Yeon is all a-tumble, and she knows this, but she also knows that smiles are only a gift when real.)

“You ought to be sleeping,” he says. Yeon tiptoes close, arms full of steaming dishes. He is unwinding the heavy silk from his brow and tugging his hair free from its bonds.

Her heart swells a little.

He cannot be much older than she. That is a comfort, among windows and walls.

“I am up with the owls,” she reminds him. The truth is that she does not like her dreams, but she will not say this. It might chase a furrow between his brows. “And you have been gone all day. Have you eaten?”

He does not hide his face behind his loose-flowing hair. He is looking at her. “I have not.”

“Then you must be hungry.”

(She is not often hungry herself, because the hours are so long that even rice sits heavy in her belly. She must stay inside, here. She must not speak to strangers. She must not wander the edges of the master’s grounds. She must be quiet like a mouse, soft like a mouse.

Easily crushed, Yeon fears, which is also like a mouse—but if she speaks that fear, it will turn true.)

“Share it with me,” Seon Ho tells her.

They eat together.

Yeon’s mind is all a-tumble, with the walls coming down in a flurry of stone and blood, the windows breaking. Yet, her heart stops when the man laughs savagely and tells her that they beat her not-brother almost to death.

(Even when he is weary—even when his eyes are glazed and aching—

He is so strong.)

_Where is he? Where is he?_ She runs and gasps and does not know what the world means, for how it wraps around her in night and light, in memory torn like frail thread.

He takes her hand. (There is blood on his face.)

She does not know who she is anymore, because she used to be someone else.

(He takes her hand.)

The master is a monster, the light is only fire, the body beside her is a boy’s body, broken.

There are no fathers, here, to speak of.

Memory—is somehow _that_.


End file.
